Prelude
In the last two months, many things happened in my life, so this is the reason I wasn’t able to dedicate a lot of time to my blog. What can I say… I’ve been in South Africa, and I literally lived experiences I will never forget and cannot be described. I visited the Blyde Canyon and the Rain Forest. I made so many safaris, I saw the elephants in the morning washing and drinking from the river, the giraffes, I saw the warthogs - and by the way, they are exactly as Pumba in the Lion King by Disney - the lion, which was about to attack the buffalos, I found the white rhinos, the hyenas and the leopards. I ate in places with monkeys literally running free, I slept in a lodge - which was more similar to a castle than a lodge, and so much more comfortable than my apartment - and I had showers with an astonishing view on the savannah and nothing else. I visited Cape Town and I bought a beautifully engraved ostrich egg, I took a boat for the island of the seals. I made pictures of so many panoramic points on the coast, and I saw one breeding of ostriches. I reached the tip of Good Hope with the funicular up to the lighthouse, and I saw where the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean meet. I saw the South Africans penguins, I stopped inside False Bay and after that, I visited the botanical garden, with so many flowers, directly under the mountains, connected to the wild forest. It was an amazing trip, but it is not the only thing it happened to me. In fact, I also decided to leave Germany…
How to properly start
I joined adidas as a Platform Engineer, but I did many things in the middle I would like to remember. When I first arrived at adidas, I realized how amazing the campus was: I never had the opportunity to work in a place like this, it seemed to me like being in The Internship (2013). In this movie, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn play the roles of two businessmen that, suddenly, lose their jobs and need to find a new way to leverage their capabilities. At that point in time, I luckily didn’t lose my job, and even if I wasn’t old as them (Ronald you will understand my feeling more than everyone else e.d. 😜) I had the idea to live something really similar, trying to reinvent what I had learned in my previous role to do my best for the company. I soon realized my first challenges were not waiting for me at work. I had to learn leaving alone, abroad, and have the responsibility of finding an apartment, as soon as possible. This first period was a real Olympic game against the bureaucracy, my worst enemy since I was 14. Regarding this, I will always remember - more than insurances of ANY KIND, or living without Internet for 2 months, signing contracts for services and utilities, opening a bank account without understanding any words of the contract - the registration of my car. Everybody knows I never got stopped by any police men before, and of course, life gave me what I deserved in the perfect moment: without plates, without documents, after a weekend with my best friend to the opposite side of Germany, thus without rest. Somehow, I was able to explain my temporary situation - but I still had to pee in a glass to prove I hadn’t taken any drugs XD It has been so scary, but this story has been part of many nights in the pub with friends afterward.
How to properly study
I soon realized how lucky I was to meet so capable people to work with (see the picture below). I learn a lot from them and I wanna thank you everyone - (Gentlemen, Pietro e.d.) - to always had involved me, by providing both your best insights and the right support in every scenario. I soon realized how to study and certificate my knowledge, by putting deadlines to pass exams and continuously learning. You all have the willingness to improve yourself, and this pushed me even more to improve as well, dealing with complex stuff we all love to do. After a few months, I found myself able to manage some pretty complex infrastructures, port my blog to AWS (btw, thank you Guido, for your huge support in this) and my improvements gave me the chance to actively contribute to the open source project of AWS CDK. By the way, I realized they closed the project - but I asked and they told me it’s not due to my code XD Just kidding, but thank you guys, for real, and a special thanks to Pietro and Davide, for their explanation of balancers. I wanna thank you also Marco for your huge support and for pushing every one of us beyond our limits. However, the best time I spent with you - Marco, please, you can jump the next one - was during the crazy nights we had. And the next paragraph is all about them.
How to properly have fun
You cannot work properly, without having fun: starting from the jokes in the yogurts of Pietro - only God knows what you ate in the last year, but I swear on my laptop we always kept our phones next to us, just in the case you had some pins stuck in your throat. I will always remember the first Volkfest in Nuremberg - and Antonio Calabbria, I’m sorry but there was nothing to hunt in that park 😂. I wanna thank you Reply, for the amazing parties organized during the Oktoberfest and just before Christmas break. I want to thank you, Davide, for everything you shared with me - and of course, I refer 110% to the alcohol we drunk together. I want to thank you, Guido and Giulia, for the amazing weekend we spent eating and walking around Nuremberg. I wanna thank you, God, because you drove those falling boxes from the third floors far from Pietro and anyone else. I wanna thank you Romano, for your enthusiasm and your deep respect of all the creatures of the entire world, no matter if they are plants, animals, or other human beings. But, most of all, I’m Italian in the bones, and so I have to spent a few world on the food as well.
How to properly eat
If you wanna eat well, don’t forget your origin: better, if you wanna eat well, eat Italian food. Well, I’m sorry but… I didn’t. For this, I have to thank you, Antonio, for your interest in the worst kind of things ever cooked in the world (sometimes, in the middle of the night, I still wake up burping those fucking onions fried inside another onion fried in a real Inception of butter), and Guido, for your cooking experiments with instruments - that clearly HYDRA engineered to safely manipulate the Tesseract. I can say I ate everything, from the chicken - cooked in only 54 hours - to the weirdest kind of sweets from the Philippines, almost based on Mango. I was very lucky to taste them but Ronald, I know you love sweet spaghetti of that famous Philippino fast food, but the plan of Mother Earth for Spaghetti was them to be salty XD From the Hawaii pizza of the new cantin, that nobody can understand yet, to the Carbonara, of the new cantin, that shares only the water used to prepare the pasta with the original Carbonara. And finally, the real Carbonara. Regarding this, I have to inform you: you have to be a professional stuntman to prepare it. So, don’t try do it at home, you could blow up a smoke bomb and go to jail (Pietro, I wasn’t there, but for the sake of completeness you made it perfect many times). The very best time we had together was during the barbecues, and I wanna thank you Romano for your hospitality: your apartment has always been open for us, and I think even for someone else because the window of the bathroom is open since - just betting, September of the last year, I guess? 🤔. Your fridge had always fed us, and not only us: I would say it could feed the whole neighbors, for weeks, because I don’t know HOW but it’s insanely full of food - like … always, or kind of. There’s the entrance to the UpsideDown inside that fridge. But… after a while, I had to move somewhere else. And this is the time I started visiting Germany for real.
How to properly visit
During the last year, I spent my time in Bamberg, an amazing place, where you can taste the smoked beer and see a wonderful example of a village and bavarian landscape. I’ve been to Nürnberg, of course, many times, during the Christmas markets, and Fürth as well - and by the way yes, it worths going there at least once in your lifetime. I spent the best weekend ever in Bonn, with my best friend, Matteo, and I wanna thank you for your patience in waiting for me in that parking. We had to speak about so many things that night, and we drunk in so many places by completely ignoring all the people around us. I’ve been to Düsseldorf as well with you, but I think we could have fun in all the place of the world together (and I hope we’ll have so much more occasion like we had this year). Then I visited Stuttgart, with Valentina, and I wanna thank you infinitely for your patience and all the times you found the way to fly to Germany to meet each other: I will always remember the surprise we had in finding that central, amazing, plaza full of people, after the quiet of a sunny Sunday without no ones around. I loved we had the chance to made our tour around the city and being at the Oktober Fest in there as well, together with the one in Munich we went together. I’ve been to Munich, alone, in AWS, and again with you, once again. Many times I flight to Dublin. We visited the Castle of Fussen, and we visited Frankfurt as well, and it was so fun finding you looking for the Hotel while I was walking. I’ve been to Berlin, alone, and it was difficult that time, and then we visited the city together, and we walked and visited so many things to become bored. I will always remember that Vietnamese restaurant - and I will always remember the time we spent together during the AWS Summit, Ronald, with me being your guide for the very first time and not the opposite. But all of my trips, all I told until now, couldn’t be the same without some special persons.
Some special thanks
Valentina, thank you for your support, your attention, and your patience: I never felt so grateful to see you once again, every time we met this year. Matteo, thank you very much for being my mirror. I will miss our phone calls while walking in the supermarket, or while waiting for the washing machine to finish the cycle. Both, I’m gonna miss our movie evenings remotely, far but near, in the three-nation of beers: Germany, Belgium, Ireland. It’s amazing what a Skype call can do… and is unbelievable that it STILL DOESN’T WORK properly this fucking Skype - sorry Microfost, but it was in the air for some years. I wanna thank you, Marco, because of the time and the passion you dedicate to your job: you truly care, too much even, and this is something to respect. I wanna thank you both, Ronald and martiano, for all the time you dedicated in listen to me and give me insights about how to deal with… well, life :-)
Conclusion
I wanna thank Daniel Eichten, Markus Rautert, Fernando Cornago, Simon Dalmaczynski and everyone else I forgot to mention in the paragraph above: if you know me a bit, you should know I like memes, so… I don’t wanna talk anymore. I just prepared a special one for this occasion.
